When you need a solid phone for an exceptional price, you turn to Motorola. It just has this formula perfected at this point, and the latest version is the Moto G Power. Here is a full Motorola Moto G Power review for you to consider.
Contents
Motorola Moto G Power Review
1. Price
If you do opt for the 2020 edition of the Moto G Power, make sure you’re getting it at a discounted price. Not only does the Moto G Power (2021) have the same $249 price as this phone, you can also find a $199 version of the newer model that features less RAM.
2. Design and display
The Moto G Power looks quite plain. The lightly textured plastic back and ergonomically curved sides make it easy to hold and handle, and the sturdy, well-built feel of the polycarbonate shell makes it feel more expensive than it is.
At once blocky and rounded, the device continues its minimalist design around its edges, which house a Type-C port, bottom-firing loudspeaker, 3.5mm headphone jack, and volume and power keys. The power key is also the fingerprint reader, and it’s okay. It’s reasonably fast and accurate, but while we have seen worse implementations of this style (hello, Sony), the side-mounted reader just doesn’t feel as natural ergonomically compared to a rear-mounted one. But alas, it’s a minor complaint, and likely a matter of preference too.
On the front, the flat LCD panel stretches across 6.6 inches, a fairly respectable size, and it offers a 720p resolution. In an age where Full HD is becoming close to universal, seeing this resolution is a bit disappointing, but the display still performs fine otherwise, boasting vibrant colors (for an LCD) and just enough brightness to be visible in most lighting.
The display has a sizable bottom chin and average bezels all around, and the front-facing camera sits on the upper left.
3. Performance
You don’t buy a phone like the 2020 Moto G Power expecting a workhorse, but the Snapdragon 665 system-on-chip powering the phone should be more than enough to handle typical tasks. Motorola also includes 4GB of memory to help keep things peppy, though there are only 64GB of storage. Need any more, and you have to turn to a micro USB card.
On Geekbench 5, which measures overall performance, the Moto G Power turned in a multicore score of 1,387. That’s better than the 1,336 results produced by the Pixel 3a and its Snapdragon 670 processor, but not as good as the 1,498 results that we got from the Snapdragon 660-powered Nokia 7.2.
Both of those phones outpaced the Moto G Power when it came time to test graphics using 3DMark’s Sling Shot OpenGL test. The Moto G Power recorded an average score of 1,734, well behind the respective 2,054 and 2,543 results produced by the Nokia 7.2 and Pixel 3a.
4. Cameras
The G Power offers a 48-megapixel main camera that produces 12-megapixel images, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a depth sensor to help create portrait mode photos. There’s also an 8-megapixel selfie camera.
The G Power uses the same main camera as the One 5G Ace, and similarly, it takes nice photos in good light. It judges exposure well and captures plenty of detail, especially with close subjects. When its AI recognizes a scene like a landscape, colors look appropriately vibrant, but otherwise, it tends toward flat, washed-out colors. In less good lighting conditions, things get a little messier where noise reduction smears a lot of detail. In high-contrast scenes where the camera has brightened shadows, there’s a fair amount of noise and/or noise reduction visible.
As with the Ace, Night Vision tends to produce a washed-out looking image and in this case, it requires both you and your subject to hold still for several seconds. There’s some noticeable shutter lag in all photo modes — enough to make you wonder for a split second if you actually tapped the shutter button — and the display is laggy when panning around in portrait mode.
This camera is just okay, and that’s fine for a $200 phone. The Moto G Power doesn’t have the processing power to pull off more sophisticated HDR or low light photography — for that you’d need to step up to the $350 Pixel 4A. It also won’t be able to keep up with fast subjects, or even slow-moving subjects in low light, but that’s often a struggle for phones priced well above $200.
5. Battery
Battery life is the G Power’s specialty, and it doesn’t disappoint. The 5,000mAh power cell is just as powerful as last year’s and it’s fully equipped to last three days of use. Lots of companies promise multi-day use from one charge, and Motorola’s devices actually deliver. Even for heavier users, two days with some juice to spare is a conservative estimate, while lighter users may only have to charge twice a week.
6. Software and special features
Motorola takes a light hand with the Android skin it puts on its phones, and that thankfully continues with the Moto G Power. You’ll find Android 10 on this phone with very little embroidery, save for a prominently displayed Moto app that offers tips and tricks about using your new phone.
If you’ve not used a Motorola phone before, those tips include your introduction to Moto Actions, which are actually helpful shortcuts for getting the most out of the Moto G Power.
Motorola can be stingy with Android updates. It’s unclear when the Moto G Power will get the newly available Android 11 update, and it’s even more uncertain if you can expect any updates beyond security patches after that.
